Narratives of the Islamic Conquest from Medieval Spain

After the Islamic conquest on Spain in 711, an array of literary works emerged during the medieval period in response to the historical event. Narratives of the Islamic Conquest from Medieval Spain explores these understudied materials from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, including epic and clerical poetry, chronicles, and an historical novel, arguing for a more open approach to a phase in Spain's cultural history that has traditionally been interpreted in polarized and generalized terms. The literary works in question reflect a wide range of responses including the political ambitions that fuelled the original event and surprising sympathetic representations of Muslim-Christian relations. Bringing together these texts for the first time, Geraldine Hazbun demonstrates that Spain's literary portrayals of the Islamic conquest form an inclusive corpus underpinned by irony, empathy, humor, and a rich diversity of perspective.